Ramblings and rants, puppies and play, dreams and drama.

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To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Ways in which having Spriggan is like having a human child, numbers, I dunno, 14-16:

She is so sweet when she’s sleeping. The past two days, we’ve returned to bed after waking up for a morning potty break. (She’s basically sleeping through the night now!)
She’s a little restless trying to determine whether or not she can go to sleep again with such excitement as “It’s light outside!” and “Daddy’s getting dressed!” going on, but she eventually settles into a fuzzy, warm ball and starts softly snoring again. (She often whistles more than snores, but she does have her piggy moments.)
Today, she wasn’t totally sold on the idea of returning to bed, so she kept grumbling and moving around in a sort of half-dreaming state. During one of these readjustments, she climbs up the side of my face with her front half (remember, she’s rather long, even for a small dog), clawing unceremoniously at my mouth and eyes for footholds, and eventually collapses across my chin and neck with her nose right in my ear, her hind feet still on the bed below.
Did I mention she whistles through her nose when she sleeps? The position, despite her long neck and face, was a little much for her respiratory system, I think, so she was even whistlier (totally a word) and wheezier than normal. So I’m trying to fall asleep with the equivalent of a car siren in my brain.
Despite how wonderful it is to have a neck-warmer like a dachshund, and despite my fear that moving her might wake her up for good, I slowly pushed her off my neck. She crawled up and flopped on me in the same position twice more before she acquiesced to curling up in a tiny, tiny ball with her chin on my wrist and falling asleep for another hour.

When she is awake, she is mostly a terror. She races around, putting everything into her mouth, bothering the family dog, and throwing tantrums if she isn’t allowed to destroy something she wants to destroy. In her case, the tantrums take the form of two powerful jaws with tiny, pin-sharp teeth, gnashing wildly and puncturing anything they touch, namely, my hands and feet. This, I believe, may be different from a human child.

I worry constantly whether she’s eating too much… eating enough… eating things she shouldn’t in the two seconds I look away… or being in danger of being eaten by something like the baby copperhead someone found in my yard today.